Overdone
by Woulvorine
Summary: Zuko reflects on how the events of the past have led him to where he is now. Will be a chapter fic. Based on Ludo's song "Overdone". Please review!
1. Chapter 1

Overdone

_I'm a snake in the grass,  
Watch your feet, let me pass.  
I'm tight and afraid;  
I can't eat, I can't change._

_And all the little mice  
Are dancing in sunlight  
While I shuffle past,  
Just a snake in the grass._

-Ludo

**Chapter 1**

_He remembered a time when he wasn't obsessed with a twelve-year-old child._

_He was happy once, when Azula would snatch his hand, her own sticky with sweat and the remains of candy, trying to keep up with his longer stride as he ran through the vast palace –_Wait up, Zuzu!_– and when his mother spent so much time beside the pond in the garden that all he could associate with her these days was the deep, almost cloying scent of fire lilies._

_Even now, he hated candy and told his crew he was allergic to lilies, so don't they dare bring any aboard his ship._

_He stands there, at the bow, pale hands gripping the edges of the railing, the edges of everything._

_He used to hate the sea, the slightly fishy musk that was somehow still fresh. The beginning of his journey, of this never-ending, pointless journey was some of the worst times of his life. Chasing a trail that had gone cold a century ago, an expedition that would surely take the rest of his youth, if not his life, was not something he looked forward to with anything resembling happiness. His mother was gone, his sister was cruel, and his father did not love him. The sea, the vast ocean with a horizon that blended with the sky, so large, was a reminder of the hopelessness of his journey, his mission, and the fact that he would be dining on fish for pretty much the rest of his sad, scarred little life._

_But then, unbelievably, success. Or, partial success. He now saw blue arrows in his dreams, flickering into appearance like someone lighting a match, but he when he reached for it, it was out like a candle. His prey was a grey-eyed bird that hadn't even grown out of its down yet, elusive, small, and swift._

_But no matter, he had thought then. I have found him, against all odds, and soon, I will be home._

_He hadn't anticipated the perseverance of his quarry, or the determined presence of his quarry's companions._

_The Water Tribe brats were definitely a problem. At first, he had brushed them off –_What could two barbarians do against the Fire Nation army anyway? – _but he soon realized that they were one of the main reasons that the Avatar kept escaping. How many times had the Avatar slipped through his fingers because those two idiotic children had simply stumbled on the right place and right time on that giant flying hairball?_

_But no, that wasn't right. They weren't truly children, he supposed. (He had found that out the hard way when his uncle insisted on replacing a worthless pai sho tile, and some pirates were determined to keep their abnormally-large noses in his business.)_

_He hadn't expected the female peasant's wrists to be so strong in his hands. They were small, still, fragile and brown, like eggshells, but the way the tendons moved beneath them, he could tell she was stronger than he had thought, her blood pounding between her bones that he could feel through his calloused fingertips._

_But it was her eyes, those damn blue eyes of hers, first dark with fear –_I'll save you from the pirates – _then blazing brightly with defiance, glittering like the scales of a fish –_Go jump in the river! – _that truly made him understand that she wasn't a mere child. Her determination belonged to that of a woman, strong in her convictions, bold in ways children simply were not._

_He still remembered the way she had smelled, even, a combination of sweat and ocean and anger. How the curve of her cheek, like a dark piece of cloth, felt as he brushed it with his, his breath fanning across her neck –_Perhaps in exchange, I can restore something that you've lost – _his fingers ghosting against her throat as he held up the necklace that he thought meant more to her than anything else. (Another mistake.)_

_But wasn't until the Spirit Oasis that he began to comprehend who this little fish was. (Fighting an enemy with everything you have is one of the few ways to truly understand someone's character.)_

_She had become so much better since their last encounter, more sure of herself, of her abilities, so much more of what she would become that Zuko, at the time, was dumbfounded, though he did well at hiding it_(I see you learned a new trick.)_. He had struggled his entire life to become what he was now, bled for it, and she had swept through her training like the water at her fingertips._

_The Fire Prince curls in on himself slightly, the ocean air whirling in his ears._

_Her fighting, though formidable, was not what bothered him now. He had proved it, back at that pond next to a bird-child that meant the return everything that he had ever wanted, with a blast of fire at dawn_(I rise with the sun.)_._

_No, it was the way she looked at him, a prince, royalty, like he was less than the scum on her boot. She, who had lost everything, was still fighting for what she believed was right, no matter how naïve and misled she was._

_(Blue eyes accompanied blue arrows in his dreams, now, glinting along the edges, and just as elusive as the creature of water she was supposed to be.)_

_He found himself admiring her. What kind of person fought so hard when all of the odds were stacked against them, like walls of ice, impenetrable and unyielding? What kind of strength allowed her to look him, one who handles flame, in the eye without flinching?_

_Probably the kind of strength that commanded an ocean._

_He finds himself not minding the smell of the sea so much anymore._

_He inhales deeply._

_He remembers a time, so long ago, when everything had made sense._


	2. Chapter 2

Overdone

And oh, I'm overcome,  
And oh, now I am new.  
I am in love again;  
I am consumed by it.

I am in love again,  
Under-drugged and overdone.

**Chapter 2**

They move together, now, like they never had a chance to before he was banished. They were young, then, and she never had the opportunity to tell him, she said, never got the chance before he was ushered onto a ship of dishonor and homesickness. She had loved him forever, she intones with a gasp, and she buries the left side of his face into her ivory neck, shaking and riding the waves of pleasure that shook the both of them, scarlet silk sheets falling as they cling to each other.

He is incapable of speech and she whispers it's okay, and kisses him soundly before rolling over and curling into him, her temple at his collarbone and her dark, glossy straight hair fans behind her, cloaking his arm in its coolness. The sweat from their bodies evaporates into the warm air, and soon her breathing lengthens, and he is alone, staring at the elaborate canopy of their bed, hatred coursing like poison through what is left of his veins, for himself, for fate, for circumstance.

Because he can't help but linger on what had happened between the moment he stepped off parched Fire Nation soil onto a cold metal ship and the instant he clambered off the worn leather saddle of a flying bison onto the ground of his beloved home. His fingers had never curled around a letter from her, no note that asked him where he was or how he was doing, no sign of affection or loyalty from the one who had professed so much.

It wasn't until he returned home the first time with his sister, when he had finally regained the honor taken from him as a child that she had come to him, eager to please and be pleased by him. Nights on the beach, the sand clumping to their sweaty skin, mornings spent feeding each other tarts and pet names on crimson couches, and afternoons spent by the turtleduck pond, basking in sunlight and affection.

But he had to leave her, then, with only a note (which, ironically, she had never given to him when he was forced from his home) to answer her questions and hurt, escaping from everything he had thought he ever wanted on a stolen war balloon, to find the bird-boy who had once been his enemy, and, without meaning to, the water girl.

He shifts, sliding carefully out from under his girlfriend's prone form, and glides to the open window. Dappled moonlight dances across the sill, across his ruined face, and he can almost feel her questing, delicate fingers ghosting over the puckered flesh, can remember a time that seems so long ago when she held his redemption in her brown little hand—_Maybe you could be free of it._

She was kind to him, when logic rankled against the idea. She had offered to heal him, her enemy, and in response, he had shot fire at her, and the Avatar fell.

The fury and anguish in her eyes told him she should have been born a firebender, even as she flung ice daggers at him, which he had countered, steam rising between two elements that could never be in the same place for long.

But that is all over now. He is Fire Lord, he is home, he is here.

He can't help it, though; as he lifts his face to the moon and inhales deeply, he wonders if she's doing the same, in another wing of the Fire Palace, or if she's curled up next to the savior of the world, her brown hands splayed across his young face, whispering sweet nothings into his ear.

Zuko does not go back to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

_I'm a snake on a shelf  
Just a pile of myself  
While the mice in the walls  
Find joy in it all._

_But I'm bad, bred to suffer  
In the dark, in this room,  
I'll explode, I'll escape,  
Get me out, make it soon._

-Ludo

ooo

The sting dulls to a throb as he takes another swig. He's never been much of a drinker, but—

"Desperate times," he says aloud, and lifts the bottle, toasting at the petite woman across from him. Toph raises her cup high, if a little unsteadily, and they throw back their drinks.

The Fire Lord slumps in his high-backed chair, and Toph lays her arms on the table, her head across her arms, and sighs. It echoes through the empty dining hall, reverberating through the dark corners of themselves. It lingers, and Zuko wants to say something but can't, he's too tired, too full of fire whiskey and too empty of everything else.

ooo

_Blue suited her, as always. The necklace hung from her neck much like her mother's had, lapis lazuli, carved with intertwining waves of water and air, attached neatly to a white satin ribbon._

_White is a mourning color, he thought._

_She fingered it nervously, a gesture he knew like he knew his own heartbeat. She was trying to catch his eye._

"_Zuko?" Blue, all blue, always blue. "Are you okay?"_

"_Yes," he said, and heard resolve but felt none. "I'm very happy for you both." It sounded like what one ought to say when confronted with such news._

_She smiled softly then, and the earth fell away. "Thank you," she said. "We're very happy."_

_He believed her._

_The wind blew in from the west, from the harbor, and he smelled the ocean and the wind flicked the ends of her hair and he reached out and caught a strand because he would not touch her._

"_Keep your hair loopies," he said, and turned to walk back to his palace._

ooo

This room is too small, Zuko thinks, it's suffocating.

Toph must be thinking the same thing, because her breathing has become shallow.

"You love him," he says, and suddenly the room is much too large.

Toph lifts her head, and her eyes are dry. "Doesn't matter," she says, and deftly plucks a dragon heart fruit from the bowl in the center of the table, slices it in half with Zuko's dagger. He sees the words etched into the blade sink into the flesh. Red juice dribbles down the hilt, coating her fingers.

"Bleeding hearts," she says, "are useless." She tosses half the fruit to him. "Eat up, Sunshine."

He bites into the fruit, a fruit from hell, from a tomb, from the catacombs of Ba Sing Se.


End file.
